Category Archives: General Knowledge

Breast Cancer Awareness Month – October

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Colouring has become a relaxing pastime for adults. El’Lanna, the senior student pictured, is certainly taking time out in the library to clear her mind. [Photo by Jayne Johnson] signs are special because October is Breast Cancer awareness month.  Support kits, with colouring in templates and information can be obtained from the BCAN website. We have a number of YA novels that deal with grief and loss – two that have characters affected by breast cancer are:

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness has already been released as a film in Spain.  We eagerly await the film’s release in Australia with Sigourney Weaver and Liam Neeson.  Our library holds both print & eBook editions.

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Stresshead by Allayne Webster.

100 Years of Anzacs

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NEVER FORGET

We’re getting busier

The past month has only allowed us a smidgen over 2 weeks of school time, during which we had 8,299 visitors and circulated 533 loans. Our Textbook Room circulated 2,032 textbooks during the same period.

CGBF Grant Work Complete

Over the holiday break, all of our fans and lights were replaced, halving our energy footprint into the future. Thank you to Paul Stevens, our local Electrician from TWT Electrics, for working many lonely days to minimize disruption to teaching and learning.

100 Years of Anzac

Australia-wide there is heightened interest in Anzac Day because of the 100th anniversary. Our multimedia display includes digital images,  primary resources, posters, books and the educational Courier-Mail Anzac Coin Collection. Students may use the lectern to scan personal accounts of diggers or quietly reflect on the lounges.

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Reader’s Cup

Our small team vying for a place in Smithfield’s district readers’ cup team started reading prior to the holidays and are making good progress. They are meeting once a week, to swap and discuss books and of course, quiz each other in the hope of blitzing this literary quiz competition. The six titles selected for 2015 are: The Rat Catcher’s Daughter by Paula Rushby  (Historical), Night Vision by Ella West (Mystery and suspense), Two Wolves by Tristan Bancks (Adventure) , A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin (Fantasy), The Last 13 – Book 1 by James Phelan (Action), One Minute’s Silence by David Metzenthen (Picture Book).

Cairns Public Library

Research is a large part of secondary school. Locating quality resources is crucial to becoming an expert in your topic -able to formulate a thesis and argue it effectively. The wealth of online resources and databases available through an ordinary membership of the local pubic library, appears to be a well-kept secret.  All our students would benefit from membership and we  would like to urge families to join the  local library, even if you don’t intend to visit the building or borrow print resources.  Without leaving home, students can access dozens of useful databases each brimming with useful information. The same login will enable you to read the world’s newspapers for free every morning and obtain homework help most evenings  between 3pm & 10pm with a qualified tutor.

Search our Information Portal  to scan our printed collection and various databases, which give you the edge. Struggling to complete your assignment?  Brush up on the ISP (Information Search Process)  and affirm that you are mean to feel anxious and vague. That’s the first stage of the Combined ISP.

 

Cairns Anzac Day Services

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March Magazine Madness

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Magazines and Newspapers

Magazines and newspapers contain good quick, current grabs of information and statistics. Our library holds a little collection of cultural magazines including: Time, Cosmos, New Scientist, Empire, Health & Fitness, Vogue, New Internationalist, House & Garden. You can also browse daily print editions of The Cairns Post, The Courier-Mail and The Australian.  Our March Madness promotion puts everyone who borrows a magazine this month into a prize draw.  Newspapers and magazines can also be read online, if you can’t work out from our information portal, how to access Time, New Scientist and Cosmos online, please ask the library staff.  We can also help you read any newspaper in the world for free, using your public library card – see Mrs Robins if you have trouble figuring that out.

The rest of  this blog, we’ll devote to statistics and snippets of information about the differences between online and printed mediums.  The Washington Post recently ran a story about how digital natives still prefer to read in print.  Co-founder of the internet Vint Cerf, is worried that, a lot of what we have saved only in a digital format has already been lost. He urges everyone to keep a print copy (e.g. photos) because the operating systems of the future will not necessarily enable us to access our old files. Lastly, a new study has found that recall is better from a book than from a Kindle.  This is my favourite- a recent article in the Brisbane Times arguing that reading can make you more successful on many levels.

Top 25 sites in Australia (March 2015)

1.Google.com.au 2. Google.com 3. Facebook 4. YouTube 5. Yahoo 6. eBay 7. Wikipedia 8. Linkedin 9. Twitter 10. Live.com 11. Amazon 12. news.com.au 13. Paypal 14. Bing 15. Gumtree 16. Commbank 17. smh.com.au 18. abc.net.au 19. realestate.com.au 20. Reddit 21. Pinterest 22. Instagram 23. bom.gov.au 24. imdb.com 25. Westpac.

Yet, our SSHS portal has heaps more functionality than all these sites – a Google search is included by default in every search, in addition to simultaneous searching of many functional educational databases.

Devices?

According Australian Multi-Screen Report (Nielsen Report Dec 2014) TV is still the centrepiece of viewing; Australians watch nearly 97 hrs per month of TV; internet is in 80% of homes; smartphones are the most common internet-connected devices in homes (91%) – tablets (60%); 74% of people aged 16+ own a smartphone; 45% of homes own tablets; 13.377 million watch some video on the internet each month (7h30m per month).

 Australian e-Generation Report (Nielsen Report Feb 2015)

2-15 yr olds spend an average of 11h12m online each week; 13-15 yr olds = 18.7 hrs/wk. Children go online at an increasingly younger age due to tablets, apps and smartphones; younger children use tablets; teens have all devices; 9 in 10 homes own laptops; 6 in 10 have wifi; 7 in 10 own tablets.

Passwords – choose something unique for your own good.

Web security firm SplashData analyses several million leaked passwords each year. Most popular in 2014 and 2013 was  ‘123456’ (in 2012, ‘password’ won). Other favourites; ‘qwerty’; ‘trustno1’; ‘letmein’; ‘abc123’. If ‘123456’ is too short, just add ’78’. Eventually we’ll see the end of passwords. The Fujitsu Purse Wallet identifies the vein patterns on your hand and the Bionym Nymi wristband uses your heartbeat as a password.

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